Targets -- the number of times a player has been the intended receiver of a given pass -- are becoming mainstream data these days. People generally cite a receiver's impressive reception to target ratio as a reason to think he's one of the best in the league. Conversely, critics will argue that a WR's terrible catch ratio proves that he's overrated. There hasn't been a lot of target discussion on the PFR blog yet, outside of this post, but Doug and I have been discussing what to do with target data over the past few days.

Let me skip the discussion for a minute and just present some stats first. Note: targets are not an official NFL statistic, and there are always differences in target data depending on which site you use. Often, the sum of the targets for all the skill position players on a team is fewer than the total pass attempts for the team, due to human error. Regardless, all target data used here are from Footballguys.com, and I believe them to be as accurate as the target data available on any other site.

Lots of intelligent people believe that receptions per target is a very good measure of the productiveness of a WR. But a metric that ranks Mike Furrey and Wes Welker as the 2nd and 3rd best receivers in the league is one that doesn't come close to passing the smell test. Derrick Mason and Mark Clayton over Steve Smith and Terrell Owens? I'm not buying that one.

One of the obvious problems is that guys like Welker and Furrey run short routes, while Owens and Smith are bigger play threats. It's just like how David Carr had a great completion percentage last year but wasn't very good. So perhaps yards per target, just like yards per attempt for QBs, will even the playing field? In theory this makes a bit of sense. If you are targeted five times on short passes, you might get four eight-yard receptions. If you're targeted five times on longer passes, you could end up with two receptions for sixteen yards each. Your yards per target would be the same, which seems like a more appropriate way to explain how you did.

But then again, that's just in theory. Who were the league leaders in receiving yards per target last year?

That looks a little better, I think. Welker and Furrey drop off the list, and the top guys are all very good. But seeing TO way behind Terry Glenn, Torry Holt (not listed) well behind Isaac Bruce, and Eddie Kennison above Steve Smith should raise some eyebrows. And I won't forget 2004, when Brandon Stokley, Ashley Lelie and Eddie Kennison ranked 1st, 2nd and 4th in the league in receiving yards per target.

So what do you think of targets? Are they worthwhile or not? Let me try and characterize Doug's position:

For the most part, yards per target and receptions per target are meaningless statistics. Much more often than not, on an incomplete pass, the targeted receiver was the *best* receiver on the field that play. If you consider all "bad" passing plays -- incompletions, interceptions, and also 4-yard-gains on 3rd-and-10 -- the targeted receiver was the best (or at least, not the worst) receiver on on that play the majority of the time. There's a positive correlation between how well the WR does his job and the probability that he gets the target.

I think Doug brings up a lot of good points. The fact that Bruce, Kevin Curtis and Steven Jackson all ranked ahead of Holt in yards per target last year is disturbing. Bryant Johnson has a better YPT average than Larry Fitzgerald or Anquan Boldin. Patrick Crayton, Terry Glenn and Jason Witten ranked ahead of Terrell Owens, too. A plausible explanation would be that Crayton only gets the target when he's wide open (which is rare, because he's not that good) whereas Owens gets the target when no one is open (since Owens is the best of the bunch). This is very much a Simpson's Paradox problem. Consider this hypo:

The Cowboys run 200 pass plays with just Crayton and Owens as the targets. On 50 of them, Crayton is open and Owens is covered. On 100 of them Owens is open and Crayton is covered. On 50 of them, neither was open. When he's open, Crayton will get 50 targets, and catch 36 passes. When Owens is open, he'll catch 50 of the 50 passes thrown to him. So far, edge to T.O.. On the 100 passes when neither is open, Owens will get the target 90% of the time because he's so much better than Crayton. Owens will convert 20 of the 90 passes into receptions, while Crayton will convert none of the ten targets into receptions. Clearly, Owens has outperformed Crayton. But Owens will have a catch-to-target ratio of 50%, while Crayton will have a catch-to-target ratio of 60%. So it's certainly plausible that Simpson's Paradox comes into play in target data, despite the relatively extreme hypothetical.

It's also possible that strong WR2s and WR3s should do well, because of matchups. Assume a team has the 10th best WR1 in the league and the best WR2 in the league, but that team's WR1 is still better than that team's WR2. But since the WR1 is only a little better than the average CB1 he faces and the WR2 is a ton better than the average CB2 he faces, it stands to reason that he'll have much better receptions and yards per target ratios.

However, Chad Johnson actually ranks ahead of T.J. Houshmandzadeh in yards per target, and both rank ahead of Chris Henry. Since many claim Chris Henry is the best WR3 in the league, you'd think he'd do well in this statistic. After all, Patrick Crayton did. And Lee Evans ranks behind Peerless Price and Josh Reed -- two of the weaker receivers in the league -- in receptions per target. I don't think Price ranked well because he's such a good WR2, but rather because Losman wouldn't throw his way unless no one was anywhere near him.

So in the end, what's the best use of target data to measure how good a receiver is? Yards per target? Receptions per target? Targets? I'll throw out one last one, that I think has some validity to it: targets per team pass. Raw target data is skewed towards teams that pass a lot, but this gets at the key question: When your team is throwing the ball, who is the QB throwing it to? Obviously this isn't perfect because Marvin Harrison would get a ton more targets if Reggie Wayne wasn't around, and vice versa. The quality of your supporting cast factors in significantly here. But here's the list:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 1:06 am and is filed under General, Statgeekery.
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Thanks, Chase, for summarizing our discussion. Another example is that Eric Moulds had a much higher Yards/Target than Andre Johnson did last year.

This here is the one-sentence summary of my position:

Much more often than not, on an incomplete pass, the targeted receiver was the *best* receiver on the field that play. If you consider all “bad” passing plays — incompletions, interceptions, and also 4-yard-gains on 3rd-and-10 — the targeted receiver was the best (or at least, not the worst) receiver on on that play the majority of the time.

Every incomplete (or complete-but-short) pass to Andre Johnson raises Moulds' rating relative to Johnson's. I'm willing to buy that some of the incomplete passes to Johnson were the fault of Johnson, but I think the majority of them were the fault of the entire offense, including Moulds, and more Moulds than Johnson.

I'm not much of a hoop-a-metrics guy, but I know that Horace Grant and Dennis Rodman had higher field goal percentages that Michael Jordan most seasons. That's not because they're better shooters. In fact, it's precisely because they are worse shooters. It's because, on the significant percentage of possessions where there is simply no good shot to be had, it was Jordan who took the tough shot, because he had the best chance of making it.

I don't know what defines a "target", but I'm not sure how valuable that stat is for receivers. I assume the target is the scorekeepers guess as to who a QB was throwing to, regardless of how close the pass actually made it.

How catchable are the balls that a receiver was targeted on?

If Owens catches 50% of his targets, but 45% of those "targets" were not reasonably catchable for him, why should he be punished?

Often, the sum of the targets for all the skill position players on a team is fewer than the total pass attempts for the team, due to human error.

Wouldn't there also be passes with no target to account for this? Plays where the QB just throws the ball away.

Yes, Richie. AFAIK, spikes and passes where the QB throws the ball away are not assigned as a target to anyone. But I suspect there's more to the difference between total targets and total attempts than that.

As for how catchable the balls are, I believe the general argument for WRs on the same team is that each WR should receive a similar number of catchable passes. I'm not sure that's very convincing, though.

i havent had time to read the whole thing, so sorry if you touched on this. perhaps furrey and welker rank high because other wr's (such as smith and owens) get more respect by DB's a lot more and thus more talented DB's making better defensive plays once the ball is in the air. double coverage comes into play too.

In the Jordan/Grant/Rodman example it isn't just that Jordan is taking difficult shots. It's also that Jordan is taking vastly different kinds of shots because he's a guard and the other two players are power forwards.

The basketball comparison fits nicely with the reason that guys like Welker and Furrey are at the top of the list of catch percentage. However, I think ignoring targets and catch percentage because it doesn't completely explain WR quality is a huge mistake. Every argument made against using targets applies to any other WR stat, from TD's to receiving yards or receptions.

Because of the interrelatedness of the entire offense, you aren't going to find a single stat that can be used to determine how good a receiver is. What bad receiving stat can't be explained by having a poor QB or a poor offense in general? What impressive stat can't be explained by the presence of a great QB or offense?

As far as the matchups thing goes, I think footballoutsiders.com has found data in their gamecharting that suggests that most cornerbacks play on a specific side of the field rather than matching up against a specific receiver, so WR1 isn't necessarily matched up against CB1 any more often than WR2 is.

I agree that the wide receiver with the most targets on any given team is likely that team's best receiver, but I think to ignore yds/tgt and catch/tgt stats is ludicrous.

So if Terrell Owens lead the Cowboys in targets in 2006, he was likely their best receiver, even though his rate stats weren't great. However, because his rate stats weren't that great, we can say that among No. 1 wide receivers, Owens wasn't really that effective.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is that we need to break down WRs by how their used by their teams. In baseball, you rarely see all pitchers lumped together; starters are compared to starters, and relievers are compared to relievers. Wide receivers should be handled in a similar manner. No. 1 WRs should be compared to other No. 1s, and No. 2 WRs should be compared to other No. 2s, etc., with the understanding that most No. 1s are better than most No. 2s, regardless of rate stats.

I think a lot of the problem here is preconceived notions. The media tells us Terrell Owens is this spectacular playmaker, so any stats that say otherwise, even if they're true, just "can't be right".

BUT...if you actually look at what happens on the field, you'll see that TO, and the WR position in general, is severely overrated. Did the Cowboys win a playoff game with TO last year? NO. The Eagles won two NFC playoff games without TO, then lost the Super Bowl with him even though he had nice stats. The Bengals haven't won a single playoff game with Chad Johnson, and missed the playoffs altogether last year. But he's such a playmaker, how can this be??? I'll tell you how--the amount of attention WRs call to themselves is inversely proportional to how good a player and instrumental to their team winning games they really are.

You can't even really say a WR is great if he's targeted a lot--it could be that his QB just makes a lot of bad throws to the guy whether he's triple-covered or not because he's the QBs safety blanket (Steve Smith anyone?).

re 9: I agree with much of your sentiments, but your final comment was interesting. Could it be that this data almost tells us more about the QB than about the WRs?

An example of what I'm thinking: Chad Johnson is the clear #1 in Cincy. However, Houshmandzadeh was targetted for a comparatively high number of throws for a #2 WR. An indication, perhaps, that Carson Palmer is a smart QB who doesn't force the ball to his #1 guy when he's covered, but picks out the #2 guy instead? (much to Chad's chagrin, of course!) Of course, it's probably also an indication of Cincy not throwing the ball to the TE much.

I think target stats are very useful, and this post is great. We just have to be conscious targets are only part of the picture. It adds information, but we should take it with a grain of salt.

The question on the end of the post asks what's THE formula for grading receivers. I think we are all looking for the E=mc^2 of football, e.g. the perfect QB rating, the "killer stat," etc. I definitely suffer from this affliction myself. But baseball guys are the worst with all their OPS + steals + ejections + hit by pitch + groin pulls = runs created calculations.

But maybe we should just accept a line of stats next to a guy's name, and interpret them on a player-by-player basis. It's hard to choose which is best, I think it's all useful data.

I realize I'm a little late to the party, but my primary bone of contention here is the formula used in calculating yards per target. Yards per target is not receiving yards divided by targets. If a player catches an eight yard out and turns it up-field for a 12-yard gain, he's credited with a 12-yard reception. But it was an eight-yard target. So using receiving yards to calculate yards per target is inaccurate. Not sure what the 'correct' or more accurate calculation is, but this is not it.

Okay, as you can see i am a die hard cowboys fan. But i would just like to say one thing: T.O has a huge ego and not even half the amount of talent to go with it. He was so full of himself i'm surprsed his head fit on the field; his catching ratio was no where near where it should be for him to possess such a huge ego.

I would have to agree with you that yards per target and receptions per target alone are not perfect statistics for rating the best receiver. There really isn't any one statistic that will tell you who the "best receiver". I think that these are statistics that can paint a portion of the picture however and when comparing receivers who have a similar number of targets and a similar percentage of the targets per pass play they were involved in I think that these two statistics can really provide a lot of comparison for two receivers. What really needs to be tracked to have a better idea however is these percentages separately for different depths and for wide open passes, single coverage, double coverage etc.

I was just linked to this article (must have missed it when it was originally written b/c I don't remember reading it), and I really have to agree with post #9 (both parts). Even stat-oriented fans bring that "well that can't be right because it makes ____ look bad" mentality. Sure some form of an "eye test" is needed, and not to say that there weren't indeed errors in the original examples, but it's something to be wary of. And I VERY MUCH agree with #9's 2nd point. This maybe only applies to the top #1s in the league, but getting a lot of targets when you're not open COULD be "he's got the best chance of making a play", but ---especially for guys with below avg. QBs -- it can be just as likely to be "QB's not making good reads and just forces to the #1", like #9's example of Steve Smith at that time of his post, and Larry Fitzgerald this past season. He had a low cth%, but if you look at rec. & drops not much over 50% of his targets were catchable. Really, you could argue that any target that wasn't a reception or drop (or maybe some more specific situations like caught out of bounds ,etc etc) was an incomplete that's the QB's fault (and thus shouldn't count towards the WR).

The website that linked me here suggested yards/routes ran (ie: pass plays participated in) by a WR -- as the #1 & #2 WR would roughly run the same number of routes, and the #1 would get more targets (opportunities) and possibly more yards, and b/c it's divided by (roughly) the same number (snaps) they'd grade out better than the #2 which is what we'd expect............unfortunately said site is pay now...if anyone knows of a free site with snaps, reply back here.